X-Message-Number: 32890
From: 
Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2010 22:08:47 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Reasons Why Uploading Is Unlikely, Ever    

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Reasons Why Uploading Is Unlikely,  Ever 

Publication  plan:  My tentative plan is to email one Reason a week, to 
various venues, and use the  intervening days to respond to comments on the 
latest.                       
Preliminary: "Uploading"  here means simulating a person in an algorithmic 
digital computer in such a way  that a living person results, a conscious 
person.  
Some possible types of computer, such as those doing  quantum computation, 
are disregarded because not enough is so far known about  them. Thus I am 
considering only computers similar to those now in use, except  for 

improvements in speed and storage capacity. It is generally believed that  this 
type 
of computer, including Turing's paper tape computer, can compute  anything 
computable.  
I'm sure that some readers/writers will disregard my  delimitation of the 
topic and change the subject. I'll try to deal with  that. 
Reason  1.  A simulation in a digital computer is just a coded description. 
With unimportant  exceptions, a description of a thing is not that thing, 
and encoding the  description makes it worse. 
For example, I can write down the quantum description of  a hydrogen atom 
in its ground state, but that writing on paper will not be a  hydrogen atom. 
If I could write down the description of a water molecule, a  collection of 
these would not be wet. Doubtless some would say that a simulated  person 
could drink simulated water, but that would be a poor simulation of an  
argument.

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